The Ultimate Workout?

This amazing exercise is free for all, but requires absolute honesty, clear focus, and meditation—something Spock would perform were he real.

Dr. Philip Maffetone

For tens of thousands of generations human fitness blossomed naturally with each child’s first steps. Movement paralleled improving health. The brain learned to efficiently walk and run slow, speed up, sprint, and rest, in part by observing adult performance. These innate instincts and intuitions are genetic gifts passed on to us.

Our earliest ancestors also relied on biofeedback by sensing heartrate. A musical metronome vital for varying rhythmic movements encouraged optimal agility, endurance, speed, and strength, making everyone an athlete. 

These features supported our essential survival skill: hunting. A mostly fat and protein human diet became a primary fuel for incredible brain-body development.

The result was an ever more complex brain unique in the animal kingdom, capable of amazing feats like the ability to regulate walking, jogging, running, and sprinting. Resting around the campfire after the feast was a meditation, albeit without discussions of VO2max, fat oxidation, or foot function. A mere million years later, exercise physiology was born. 

Can we harness these great ancestral treasures to empower us today? Yes.

We still must effectively fuel our daily physical activities. Now called exercise, workouts often lack personalization. Instead of natural guidance they are steered by hype from social media, sports magazines, the news—it’s following the herd as if one size shoe fits all. 

Sadly, the herd is headed for a cliff. Injuries, overtraining, poor performances, and other unnatural outcomes have hampered the physical prowess previous generations afforded us by passing on a powerful baton. These natural instincts have fortunately not disappeared, they’re just repressed.

We don’t have the same brains today; we potentially have better ones. 

The Human Race

Long ago, we won the race to dominance. Today, however, only a few lead pack pros continue advancing, signified by breaking records. Most of the sports world, like everyone else, has become unhealthy, overfat, slower—or even worse. A once natural intuitive approach to health and fitness has been hijacked by advertising and marketing—an exercise prescription and menu for the masses. Most of the world follows as if marching onward from war. The emotional mantra of no pain no gain means more is better be it miles, speed, laps, and junk food. This drives the modern human race, where society ensures only one winner and the rest losers.

While no longer in dangerous jungles with big wild beasts, modern humans have a major modern stress: misinformation. It’s as if we require instructions on how to put one foot in front of the other. By not using our brains and bodies to their fullest, we fall behind.

The good news is that today’s brain still has powerful innate behaviors—gut feelings—hardwired within us. Pop psychology says they’re fake when in fact intuition and instincts are complex neural traits passed on to us through DNA. Even in the arts we flow, allowing our imaginations to run wild—not thinking but doing. In music, it’s improvisation. We can do the same with exercise.

Imagine you’re on a trail in the woods. Suddenly, the brain’s gut feeling directs you to forge a new path. It’s a meditation of natural senses (this one’s called forest bathing or Shinrin-yoku in Japanese). Our innate powers are enhanced by embracing them, and supported by healthy exercise and food.

Brain Training

Improving performance while reducing stress is what I mean by brain training, or retraining. It combines intuition, intelligence, and altered states of consciousness. Useful for any exercise, including competition, it’s our dance of life. 

Transitioning to brain training can be challenging, although you’ve certainly felt it. We distance ourselves from a crazy world like the loneliness of the long distance runner. The real journey expands the mind and builds a better body.

Whether cycling, walking, marathoning, rehabbing, or other natural activities, they’re all similar and simple: The brain initiates slow movements to warm-up, increases intensity, and gradually cools down before resting.

As a natural workout, the brain might perform this cycle one or more times. So possibly: slow, more intense, slow, more intense, slow. The goal is personalized movement guided by the brain without inappropriate peer pressure or social noise. 

Initially, keep it shorter rather than longer, easier rather than harder, and always feeling good. Afterwards, a body without pain or undue fatigue, especially the next morning, infers success.

When first coaching, I embraced this instinctual flexible approach. It’s similar to the Swedish interval training system from the 1930s called fartlek, meaning speed play. Yes, playing helps make exercise fun and effective.

Encouraging people to train through heartrate awareness, monitors became useful. The goal was to wean off them and use instinct. This did not easily happen, but success came to those using these devices wisely, ultimately knowing their heart rate even before looking at the watch.

We can still intelligently monitor ourselves with biofeedback. The 180-Formula helps make the transition, especially when working out with others, to evaluate fatigue during longer training, and to measure progress while guarding against regression (the MAF Test).

Balancing Health & Fitness

The ultimate fitness workout requires us to first be a healthy human. Here’s a summary:

1. Brain Health. This is the most important part of exercise. Like the body, recovery is as essential as the workout. Sleeping 7-9 hours nightly helps ensure it. Longer or more intense workouts necessitates more rest. At least one off day from exercise is great for everyone.

2. The Aerobic System. Included are slow-twitch muscle fibers that support endurance and flexibility, bones and joints, circulation, immunity, converting stored fat to energy, and feeding fast-twitch muscle fibers for speed. Impairment of these areas, or when easy workouts over-elevate the heartrate, aerobic deficiency is common. Rehab is typically 3-6 months of easy-only aerobic training.

3.  High Intensity Training. A natural part of human development, increased intensity while walking, running, cycling or other movements has great value. Incorporate it only after building a great aerobic system, indicated by the ability to perform faster activities at lower effort or heartrate.

4. Ancestral Cuisine. Eating like our ancestors offers primary protection and promotion of optimal brain-body development. Avoiding all refined carbohydrates, including sugar, is key. Replace bad foods with natural nutrient-dense ones. (see Carbohydrate Intolerance).

Thank our ancestors for intervals: going slow, speeding up, ending slow, resting, along with eating well, forest bathing, and gut feelings. They improved human performance so we can endure. Brain training is today’s ultimate workout for success.

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